The Goodies sit shivering inside their office as a blizzard rages outside and they are all wrapped up in a single ultra-long scarf with beanies on their heads (or in Tim's case, a tea cosy complete with teapot still inside it!) in a futile bid to get warm. The office is freezing because of Graeme's failed attempts to get a nuclear generator heater working and even his computer's very British solution of a nice hot cup of tea to solve the heating crisis promptly ices up as well. The Goodies are determined not to do any more charity jobs, but the next client who knocks on the door (with Tim quickly moving to answer the door while still wrapped in the scarf, almost choking Bill and Graeme!) is a rather broke and very shapely young lass named Hazel who enters and sits rather elegantly across two chairs with all three Goodies crowding around attentively. Hazel asks the Goodies if they can help her to find her father; a Professor who vanished 20 years ago in search of the Lost Tribe of the Orinoco, although she was under the impression that he busy was in the potting shed until yesterday when he didn't turn up to her mother's funeral!

The Professor's diary had been sent to Hazel and was filled in with his precise movements up until the very moment that he had disappeared, so after Bill and Graeme finally convince Tim that the search will be worthwhile (notably because the jungle climate will at least be hot, unlike their current predicament) the Goodies decide to follow the exact notations in the Professor's diary in a bid to locate him after all those years. Hazel insists that she must come along with them, but Tim is dead against the idea, claiming that "women always sprain their ankles at the vital moment" on explorations; a claim also echoed by the Professor in his diary from 1951.

The Goodies enter the quick change cabinet and emerge clad in explorer gear, but when Hazel follows them into the cabinet she comes out with just a towel wrapped around her ("Excuse me, I don't think it's working properly" G (smirking): "Oh yes it is!") and she is left behind to sulk at the office as the Goodies head off on their trek (after firstly tripping over the trandem on the way out!) Following the Professor's diary entries, the Goodies walk around in a circle until they get strangely dizzy (which as the Professor noted, could have been from malaria ... "or just from going around in circles!") and then head "due west in a dead straight line". The Professor's notes get even stranger ("suddenly I stopped, turned around, ran in circles, jumped in the air, lay on my back and waggled my legs, got up, hopped on one leg, impersonated a butterfly and fell over. I think I'm going mad!") but the Goodies dutifully mimic them as they set up their tent for the night in the wild – right beside a bus stop on a busy motorway.

Shortly afterwards Hazel disembarks from a bus to join the expedition much to Tim's displeasure (as he huffily complains "It's a bit cramped in here, isn't it?"), but Graeme has designed the tent with TARDIS-like expansion properties, with it having separate bedroom and bathroom areas. Graeme and Bill are buttering Hazel up but Tim is not at all happy that she has joined them and complains that she will sprain her ankle any minute ("I'm sure she's limping a bit already!") Naturally Hazel takes the luxury sleeping quarters, which leaves the Goodies to share a giant sleeping bag which Bill bought from a scout shop (after removing the boy scout and his young schoolgirl partner who are still hiding in there!)

Tim is quite disgusted with the thought of sharing a sleeping bag with Bill ("I only hope my mother never gets to hear about this!") and the Goodies' attempts to treat Hazel as "one of the boys" soon come unstuck when she drifts by to the bathroom in just her lingerie. Three heads come up after she has passed and Tim remarks "One of the boys just went through!" (G: "Yeah, I saw him!") before they all go gaga and realise that they're never going to get any sleep with Hazel around.

Graeme's remarkable clock is able to change night into day, so the Goodies set off again along a new route before eventually coming to a "momentous decision" to "take the tent off!" For the next four days the Goodies and Hazel press on through "savage country" (hacking their way through weeds along the side of the motorway to the catchy tune of 'Wallabaloo') and after they survive a close encounter with a rogue sheep and take turns to carry each other (Bill just can't wipe the smug smirk off his face when being carried by Hazel!) they eventually reach the exact point where the Professor disappeared (with a diary entry of "I have mysteriously disappeared without trace."). Rather than the South American jungle, they find themselves in deepest, darkest Sevenoaks in Kent, where the sight of tribal souvenirs in the craft shop windows and the sound of the jungle drums from the bushes in the park point the way to the Professor and the lost Bu-boom tribe.

Upon being asked by Graeme about his "important anthropological research", the Professor reveals that he is in fact Professor Nutz, the educated comic (hence Hazel keeping quiet about her surname!) and he had previously topped the bill wherever he went, but had reached the point where everybody had heard his jokes and he couldn't attract an audience anymore. He had therefore sought out the Bu-boom tribe because they were the only people left in the world who hadn't yet heard his rotten jokes (bu-boom!) and he also liked their charming manner of chorusing "Bu-boom" after each corny joke as "it's nice to be appreciated". According to the Professor, the tribe has settled in Sevenoaks because "it's so handy to the shops" (bu-boom!) and they have remained lost because the locals are "pretty unobservant" and haven't even noticed their presence as yet. Although the tribe are unspoilt by man, the Professor couldn't stand their food, so he has taught them to cook civilised food such as avocado vinaigrette and "steak & kidney pud"; much to the Goodies' relief when they are invited to stay for a meal (as Graeme had worried about them possibly serving up "sheep's eyes, water rat's bladders and live earwigs" as their local delicacy!)

Hazel wants to stay with her father, but the Goodies want to get out and head home, especially when the tribe's Witchdoctor appears and wants to sacrifice them. After Graeme impresses him with some "white man's magic" to cure Hazel's supposedly sprained ankle, the Witchdoctor offers Tim a sip of "firewater" (petrol ... which Tim hastily spits out!) then even more worryingly makes a pass at him! The reason for the Lost Tribe of the Orinoco being in Sevenoaks was that they got lost (bu-boom!), but Tim righteously declares that this makes them all illegal immigrants and that they should be reported to the authorities at once. This angers the Witchdoctor sufficiently for him to demand that the Goodies be eaten, though Graeme declares that he is very fussy about his food and isn't keen on being cooked as a "spit roast or fry up", which the Professor suggests as their likely fate.

Taking the initiative, Graeme carefully explains to the Witchdoctor (in broken English with lots of hand gestures) that he knows a really tasty recipe which he will cook Tim and Bill up by if the tribe lets him go (drawing a reply of "That would be marvellous" in perfect English from the Witchdoctor!), so Tim and Bill go into the cooking pot, to their cries of "two faced traitor" and "what about us, four eyes?!" directed at their supposed chum. The Professor tells the tribe to "put the steak & kidney pud back in the fridge" and they all break into a chorus of 'Gingangooly' as Graeme (posing as the "Galloping Cannibal") smoothly comperes a recipe session for "Human Clear Soup" After adding various vegetables and trimmings to the cooking pot, he declares that as it is "clear soup", the "meat" is thrown out, so Tim and Bill are hoisted out of the pot by the tribesmen and unceremoniously dumped head-first into nearby rubbish bins. Graeme serves up the soup in style as the curtain comes down, then makes his escape (while the tribe are happily singing "We're riding along on the crest of a wave ...") and ushers out Tim and Bill (still with rubbish bins over their heads) so that they can finally head for home. They all wake up in the tent feeling even more frozen than ever and wonder if they are heading in the right direction after all. It was dark when they had pitched their tent and when the howling wind blows the tent clean away; they find that Bill's navigating error has put them in an icy Arctic wilderness instead as they huddle together to keep warm.

CLASSIC QUOTES

* Bill (semi-impressed that Graeme's computer's solution to their heating problem is to make a cup of hot tea): "You can tell that's a British computer, can't you?!"

* Graeme: "But the South American jungle is no place for a little gal"

Hazel : "I'm not a little girl. I'm a mature woman"

Graeme (eyeing her off with a fiendish cackle): "That's all right then!"

* Tim" Sevenoaks is a long way from the Orinoco. How did the lost tribe come to settle here?"

Professor: "They got lost! (Bu-boom!) You see, 500 years ago their ancestors sailed from South America in a Viking longboat to prove that the Norwegians could cross the Atlantic on a papyrus raft!"

CLASSIC SCENES

* Graeme unfolds a canvas television set out in the middle of nowhere and switches it onto a BBC program. Bill scornfully tells him that a canvas TV can't work, as it's scientifically impossible. Graeme replies "Oh yeah. So it is. Damn!", turns it off in disgust and folds it away!

* Tim tries to lay a board across a creek, but does a bellywhacker into the water to the applause of a crowd of people on a nearby bridge. He defiantly motions to them to sod off, then wipes the tears from his eyes.

* The exploration party hears rustling sounds in the bushes, Hazel screams and Tim bravely goes to investigate. He is stomped upon by a high-leaping loony feral sheep, but after a mighty tussle he punches it in the head and flings it through the air, bowling over Bill and Graeme in the process. The sheep gets some measure of revenge shortly after when it swings from a rope Tarzan-style and repeatedly shirtfronts an unsuspecting Bill, sending him sprawling on the ground.

* Graeme's "Galloping Cannibal" routine – a wickedly egotistical, condescending impersonation of the Galloping Gourmet - where he cooks up Human Clear Soup for the lost tribe. Based in a chef's kitchen with Bill and Tim simmering away in a cooking pot at the side, Graeme pretends to chop up an onion, then crushes a clove of garlic and throws it away, smugly telling his audience that he "only did that to show off!" After adding various other ingredients, he drenches Bill and Tim with a precise amount of red wine, only to then take a huge gulp from the wine bottle and lean across onto an imaginary counter; falling sideways heavily to the floor in a tiddly state. Even more smugly declaring "Oooh, aren't I clever?!", he then stirs up the soup with a ladle (drawing an "Ooh, careful!" from an aggrieved Bill) before pulling his masterstroke of getting the cannibals to throw out the meat – Bill & Tim – in order to make the Human Clear Soup.

GUEST STARS

Roy Kinnear, Bridget Armstrong, Olu Jacobs

GOODIES SONGS

Wallabaloo

MOCK ADVERTISEMENTS

Beanz Meanz Heanz - "Tea Time"

MY 2 CENTS WORTH

A rather silly plot with a lot of material that would be considered politically incorrect nowadays, which is not such a bad thing necessarily. Some enjoyable visual gags, especially Tim's hilarious battle with the loony feral sheep, while Graeme's "Galloping Cannibal" is a real highlight.

As you say, the best known Goodies episode. It's my favourite too, not least because many of the locations shots were filmed in the car park of what was then Ealing Technical College, conveniently located opposite Ealing Studios which was by then regularly used by the BBC. I was a student there in the 70s and we were all reverently shown the fading cat footprints in the staff car park...

I remember watching this in the late 1970s or early 1980s when ABC TV in Australia decided to do an unedited broadcast of the entire series for once (There was much discussion at school the next day about any episodes that involved naked ladies bits). TV Week had Kitten Kong listed one night and I was very disappointed when it was broadcast in Black and White while all the other episodes shown were in colour... Well, almost all the other episodes. There was much more discussion at school about it when the Montreux 1972 edition was shown a few weeks later in full colour, but with quite a few changes made to it from the original. I think I had recorded the series via my brother's Betacord VCR and not knowing about the wiping of the original version ended up recording over it after getting the colour version instead. Alas, none of those recordings exist anymore after all these years. But it does go to show that the ABC did have a Black and White copy of the original Kitten Kong mixed in with their repurchased colour catalogue of the series sometime just before or after 1980.